Ruling Gives Protection to Alien Minors in Custody

Deporting minors without allowing them to contact a parent, relative, friend or lawyer is unconstitutional, a Los Angeles federal judge ruled Monday in ordering U.S. immigration authorities to allow telephone access for children apprehended for being in this country illegally.

U.S. District Judge Edward Rafeedie also ordered immigration officials to provide a statement of legal rights in a language easily understood by the minors before deportation action can be taken against them.

Civil libertarians said Rafeedie’s action is a landmark ruling that will protect the rights of minors seized by the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

“This way, the kids will not be railroaded out of the country without a phone call to find out what their rights are,” Charles Wheeler of the National Center for Immigrants’ Rights said in Los Angeles.

INS officials said late Monday that they would reserve comment until they had a chance to study the 38-page ruling.

‘Well-Intentioned Agency’

In his decision, Rafeedie said he was hesitant to act against the INS because it is a “well-intentioned agency with considerable expertise.”

“Nonetheless, plaintiffs have shown a deprivation of rights . . . (and) the court has determined that past and current INS procedures violate the due process rights of plaintiff class,” the judge wrote.

The ruling involved a class-action suit filed in 1981 by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California on behalf of Jose Antonio Perez-Funez, a 15-year-old boy from El Salvador who was about to be deported to his homeland.

Although the boy’s father was a lawful U.S. resident living in New York, the INS induced the boy--apprehended as an illegal immigrant--to sign a voluntary departure form without knowing what his rights were, ACLU attorney Mark Rosenbaum said.

The boy agreed to deportation after he was told that he would be subject to long imprisonment if he did not sign the papers. Also, court documents show, the boy was told to agree to immediate deportation because he could not afford bail.

When an attorney tried to intervene, the INS refused to stop the deportation. Eventually, a court order from a federal judge in Los Angeles was obtained to halt the proceedings.

Convinced that the rights of minors were being violated, Rafeedie issued a preliminary injunction in January, 1984, that ordered INS agents to stop using coercion in order to get under-age illegals to sign the voluntary departure forms. The judge also ruled that the children should be provided with a written statement of rights upon apprehension.

Confusing Statement

The statement drawn up as a result of the ruling was too confusing, however, and many youngsters were still being deported without any contact with their parents, Rosenbaum said.

In one case that attracted widespread publicity, a 14-year-old Santa Ana boy, Mario Moreno Lopez, was mistakenly deported to Mexico last year after he was apprehended by INS agents in Orange County.

Officials said the agents who arrested Moreno Lopez were unaware that the youngster was 14 and therefore did not read him the list of rights that were supposed to be read to minors.

In issuing a permanent injunction Monday, Rafeedie went further than his preliminary injunction and ordered that telephones be made available to minors.

“The INS shall inform . . . that he or she may make a telephone call to a parent, close relative or friend or to an organization found on the free legal services list (to be maintained by INS officials),” the judge wrote.

“The INS shall so inform . . . of this opportunity prior to presentation of the voluntary departure form.”